If the signs are to be believed, the end of the world as we know it starts on May 21. Billboards are popping up around the globe, including in major Canadian cities, proclaiming May 21 as Judgment Day. "Cry mightily unto GOD for HIS mercy," says one of the mounted signs from Family Radio, a California-based sectarian Christian group that is sending one if its four travelling caravans of believers into Vancouver and Calgary within the next 10 days.
Family Radio's website is blunt in its prediction of Judgment Day and the rolling earthquake that will mark the beginning of the end. "The Bible guarantees it!" the site proclaims, under a passage from the book of Ezekiel, which says "blow the trumpet … warn the people."
Richard Ascough, a professor in the School of Religion at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., has been watching Family Radio's campaign, and fully expects life as we know it to continue on May 22.He has seen other apocalyptic predictions come and go, but Family Radio's differs in a notable way: it isn't accompanied by a bold, up-front request for money. And that's worrisome, in his mind.
"I think they really believe it's going to happen," Ascough said in an interview Tuesday.
Some questions to be asked:
1) How have these people altered their lives because of this prediction?
2) What will these people do should the event not take place?
3) Can we learn anything from these situations when we're confronted with equally as startling (and sometimes nebulous) issues such as, say, birth certificates and death reports -- how can we better draw the line between fact and fiction?
